LEXINGTON, Ky. - There was a wild cheer at Keeneland's April 2-year-old sale Monday night when the gavel fell at $625,000 for Hip No. 73. The joyful roar reverberated from behind the bidding ring to the sale pavilion's front foyer, and it came from the extended Helmbrecht family.

Hip No. 73, a stout son of Bernardini, came to the sale as a one-horse consignment for trainer Bill Helmbrecht. He left the auction ring as the sale-topper for Bill's brother, Mike Helmbrecht, who bred the bay with partner Bill Geist.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Speightstown, 2004's champion sprinter and now a sire at WinStar Farm, underwent colic surgery on April 1 but is recovering well at Hagyard Equine Medical Institute, according to WinStar.

WinStar shipped the 12-year-old Gone West stallion from the Versailles, Ky., farm to the Lexington clinic on Thursday evening. Hagyard veterinarians discovered that he had a large colon torsion and performed surgery to correct it.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - You couldn't make up a better story. Thoroughbred owner Ahmed Zayat, pursued by his bank for allegedly defaulting on $34 million in loans, files for bankruptcy and cheats the bank's attempt to take over his 200-horse stable, then turns up with Eskendereya, a hot prospect for the Kentucky Derby.

The landscape of the grounds at Barretts Sales at Fairplex Park in Pomona, Calif., may literally change in the next year.

The Los Angeles County Fair, which owns Barretts, has submitted a conditional-use permit application to the city of Pomona, with the intention of demolishing three of the nine sale barns for alternative uses, according to the fair's chief executive, Jim Henwood. He said the application requests the right to change the use of all nine barns, but that the county fair intends to keep six barns to house horses for sales.

LEXINGTON, Ky. - Like all the other major auctions of 2-year-olds last year, Keeneland's 2009 April sale endured double-digit losses across the board. But those declines - 27 percent in gross, 16 percent in average price, and 22 percent in median - were the shallowest of the boutique 2-year-old sale season, which saw the market drop by roughly 33 percent overall.

A Pulpit colt posted the fastest quarter-mile time of 20.60 seconds Thursday at Keeneland's under-tack preview for its April 5 juvenile auction.

The one-day under-tack show, which took place on Keeneland's Polytrack racing strip, also produced six eighth-mile works in 10 seconds flat.

The fastest quarter-mile time was by Hip No. 165, Pulpit's chestnut son of Checkerspot, by Affirmed. Eddie Woods, agent, consigned the colt, a May 18 foal and half-brother to Grade 3-placed stakes winner Salty Romance.

An unnamed colt by Valid Expectations brought $100,000 to top the Fasig-Tipton Texas 2-year-olds in training sale at Lone Star Park near Dallas on Tuesday. Jerry Durant of Weatherford, Texas, purchased the horse from Pike Racing, agent.

The Valid Expectations colt was one of two high-end purchases by Durant, who also paid $80,000 for a Wildcat Heir colt who ranked as the fastest worker during the under-tack preview for the sale on Sunday.

In the 1980s, Teresa McWilliams attended a California horse sale and was quickly in an awkward situation.

McWilliams, a real estate agent in the Santa Barbara area, took a fancy to a few of the yearlings available and bought one - and then another, and then another.

"I got so excited I put my hand up six times," she recalled recently. "I didn't know what I was doing. It was pretty this, pretty that. That's how I started, that was about 25 years ago.

Prices for Thoroughbred racing stock continued to decline at the 2010 Barretts March Sale of 2-year-olds in training in Pomona, Calif., on Monday, with the average and median prices down sharply.

Sixty-nine 2-year-olds went through the ring at an average price of $90,652 during the one-day sale, down 26.4 percent compared with last year's average of $123,245, according to figures provided by Barretts. The average last year was down 30 percent compared to the 2008 sale.